


heaven's grief (brings hell's rain)

by HearJessRoar



Series: just one yesterday [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Willie is a Good Boyfriend, i like to make characters sit at their own gravesides, they're dead i know that we all didn't see that coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28294653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HearJessRoar/pseuds/HearJessRoar
Summary: Despite Julie's warnings, Alex decides to go see his final resting place.Willie rolls onto his stomach, nearly on top of Alex’s grave, and reaches out. He traces the dates with one gentle finger, and Alex has to look away, feeling oddly like he’s somehow intruding.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Series: just one yesterday [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2092452
Comments: 31
Kudos: 292
Collections: oh YES





	heaven's grief (brings hell's rain)

Alex doesn't tell anyone when he decides to go.

It's not that he _wants_ to go alone, but.

Luke and Reggie went to their gravesides themselves, and even though Julie had warned him that his own grave in particular had made her cry, Alex doesn't want to burden anyone else by asking them to come along and hold his hand.

He's seventeen, for crying out loud, he can handle his own final resting place.

So he goes when Julie is at school and when Luke and Reggie aren't paying attention, too caught up in a particularly tricky riff that's been giving Luke trouble for days.

He knows the location without having to be told exactly where it is, like an intrinsic part of him is calling out for his soul. The thought makes him shudder.

And when he steps through the flash of light and exits at the bottom of the grassy hill, bracing himself for anything he might see, he's unprepared for this.

There's someone at his grave.

His stomach drops and for one heart-stopping moment he wonders if his sister has come to see him.

But as he approaches and the details fill in, he finds himself facing the soles of familiar worn sneakers.

"Willie?"

He gives Alex a lazy wave, stretched out parallel to where Alex’s casket is buried six feet below. He tucks his hand back behind his head, his hair fanned out around him like he's been here awhile. The gnarled old tree that seems like it’s been planted way too close to his grave casts purple shadows over Willie’s face, the darkness tinted cool even in the midday sun.

"What are you doing here?"

Willie cracks a grin at him, but there's something broken in it. "Oh, you know. Chillin'."

Alex raises his eyebrows. "At my grave?"

Willie sighs. "Yeah." He says, pushing himself up on his elbows. He has stray bits of grass stuck in his hair and Alex aches to brush them away. "Julie said you'd probably sneak away when no one was looking, and she didn't want you to see this by yourself." He gestures weakly beside him, a lame little showman gesture that he clearly hates.

And Alex looks.

He doesn't have a headstone.

It's the first thing he notices.

There's a little bronze plaque with his name on it, slowly sinking into the earth, pressed down by twenty five years worth of nature and age.

His birthday, and his deathday, and a tiny dash in between them, like the seventeen years he got was inconsequential. Like his life had been nothing but a blip in the timeline.

There’s no _Beloved Son_ , nothing about his passions, nothing to note who he was as a person.

Just his name, _Alexander Mercer_ , and the time he lived reduced down to a few lines embossed in bronze.

And he knows that it hadn’t been a question of money. His parents weren’t comfortable the way that Reggie’s parents were, but life insurance was a thing, and he’d taken for granted that no matter how they’d felt about him at the end they’d have at least remembered to replace what was supposed to be a temporary grave marker with some sort of permanent stone, to acknowledge that he’d existed, that he’d been here, that he’d been real.

His unbeating heart twists in his chest and Alex knows he wears his emotions on his face because Willie is immediately on his feet and in front of him, blocking the view of his own sad grave.

“Hey, ‘lex, look at me, it’s okay, come back-” he’s babbling, looking panicked and Alex realizes that he’s dug his fingernails so hard into his palms that if he still lived he’d probably be bleeding. As it is, he unclenches his fists to find stark white half moons dug into his skin. He stares down at them blankly.

This was why Julie had cried for him.

This was why she had asked Willie to be here.

And behind the pain and the ache in his chest and the burning in his throat, Alex feels such a rush of affection for that amazing girl. Her tiny frame held so much love and concern in it for all of them.

Willie’s hands are on his arms, his thumbs making uncertain circles on his biceps, and Alex registers his presence again. “How’d you know I’d be here today?”

Willie blinks, taken aback. “Uh. Well. You’ve been really quiet lately, all-” he waves a hand in some vague gesture and then immediately puts it back at the crook of Alex’s elbow. “-spacey. I figured you were building up to this. When you didn’t ask me what I was doing today, I thought this might have been your plans.”

And it should probably scare him, the way that Willie can read him so easily. They haven’t known each other that long, and Alex is still unravelling what he can about Willie when he offers up the information. But there’s something so comforting about having someone who can puzzle piece his moods and his actions into place that well. Willie _gets him_ , weird anxious parts and all.

Julie’s been teasing him about soulmates lately, and Alex is starting to wonder if she might actually be on to something.

His knees feel a little bit weak at the thought, and he motions that he wants to sit down. Willie gets to the ground first, sitting between Alex and Alex’s grave like he’s trying to be a buffer between them. He stretches out again, his legs bent at the knee, trying so hard to look casual, but Alex can see the calculation in his movements, the too careful way he’s made himself a bigger barrier between Alex and his own mortality.

It’s such a little thing to do but Alex is so used to being the one who guards his friends that he’s not quite sure how to handle the flood of emotions that hits him when he realizes that Willie is just as teeth-bared protective as Alex is.

He sits with his arms wrapped around his shins as the sun dapples through the branches above. Alex is weirdly glad that he has a tree here. It makes his grave seem less lonely.

It’s quiet for a long moment, the rustling of leaves the only thing breaking the peace.

Willie rolls onto his stomach, nearly on top of Alex’s grave, and reaches out. He traces the dates with one gentle finger, and Alex has to look away, feeling oddly like he’s somehow intruding.

“We were alive at the same time,” Willie murmurs, the pad of his finger making looping circles over the O in October. “I’m eight years older than you.”

Alex snorts. “Cradle robber,” he says before he can help himself. Willie laughs and turns back to face him.

“It’s weird to think about the time period we grew up in, huh?” he says contemplatively. “There’s still so much bad in the world, but man, I remember there being AIDs PSA’s in my comic books.”

Alex nods. “I remember those. I didn’t really know what they were for, since I was like, nine.” Willie swats at his shoe. “Hey! It’s not my fault you were already an old man by the time I was in third grade, one of us remembers the seventies and it ain’t me, dude-”

Willie growls and yanks at his sleeve, pulling him to the ground next to him. Alex tips over in a mass of sprawling limbs, trying desperately not to hit Willie in the face.

Even if he’d deserve it a little, since it was his fault in the first place.

But Alex knows what Willie is doing, and that’s trying to distract him from how sad and neglected his own grave is. And if Alex was the type of person to say such things so easily, he might even say he loves him for it.

He unfurls, lays flat on his back next to Willie, his hands clasped over his stomach as the sharp edges of the grass poke into his hair.

Willie doesn’t lay back down, remaining on his side with his head propped on his palm, elbow buried in the grass. The key on his necklace has looped over his shoulder and Alex reaches out to tug it back where it should be. “This your house key?”

Willie nods, bringing up his other hand to fiddle with the little silver bit of metal. “Mhmm. It was just me and my mom, so she had to work. I was a latch-key kid. They used to write thinkpieces on that and how it screwed us up.”

“I think you were plenty screwed up on your own,” Alex says and Willie rolls his eyes, an amused smile tugging at his mouth. “Just you and your mom, huh?”

And Willie’s eyes seem suddenly so far away that Alex almost regrets asking. “Yeah. We were pretty close. Even after I did this-” he tucks his hair behind his right ear, his earring glinting in the sun. The same way he’d showed it subtly to Alex when they’d met, an open-ended question that Alex hadn’t realized he’d ignored until later. “She cried for me, but not _at me,_ you know?”

And Alex doesn’t know, because when he’d come out to his parents in their living room, they stopped speaking to him for two days.

Or maybe he does know, since his sister had crawled into his bed that night and cried into his shoulder. At the time he’d figured it was just her coming to terms with it, but maybe Mel had been scared _for_ him. He never got the chance to ask.

“In any case, she got me cremated. I think I’m still on the fireplace mantle.” Willie makes a twisted face, like he doesn’t know how to feel about that. “She had my board mounted on the wall above my urn the last time I went home. Like a deer head or something. She probably uses it as a conversation starter to make people uncomfortable.”

“Your mom sounds like a trip.”

Willie snorts, looking fond. “She is. You ever thought about finding your sister? I know you two were pretty close, too.”

Alex swallows, closing his eyes for a moment as his own grief washes over him. “Yeah, but...I’m not sure if I wanna know who she’s become. What if she hates me?”

Regardless of whether or not she could see him, he doesn’t think he could handle that. The gravemarker had been bad enough. He doesn’t need to see proof in his sister’s aged face that his parents had gotten to her.

Willie hums in understanding and Alex lolls his head to the side to look at him. “The people we leave behind, man,” he sighs, trailing off like he’s not sure where that sentence was going. The sun glints off the bronze gravemarker, shining through the triangle gap formed by Willie’s arm as he holds up his head, and it catches Alex’s eye, no matter how badly he doesn’t really wanna look at it.

“Hey, ‘lex,” Willie says, pushing himself up to sit properly in front of him, criss cross style with his elbows coming to rest on his knees. Alex’s eyes snap back to his. “I was really only here to make sure you weren’t alone the first time you saw this. I can leave if you want some time to yourself here.”

Alex shakes his head no before he can even process what’s being said, scrambling to sit up as dry grass and dead leaves fall from his hair, his hand shooting out to wrap around Willie’s wrist tightly. “Please-” his voice breaks.

Because the thought of being left here with nothing between him and his grave and the stark reminder that his parents really truly threw him in the ground and forgot about him for _twenty five years_ is horrifying to the point that if Alex thinks about it too long he can almost feel his throat being coated with blood again and dear god _please please please do not leave me here alone-_

Willie seems to understand, because of course he does, he’s _Willie_ , and he covers Alex’s hand with his own. He untangles the vice grip Alex has on his wrist and Alex can feel himself blush in embarrassment over his reaction, but Willie just leans over and presses a kiss to the back of Alex’s hand, weaving their fingers together as best he can at such an awkward angle.

He’s the best thing Alex has ever seen in his life or death, with twigs stuck in his tangled hair and his face cast half in shadows. “I’ll stay,” Willie promises.

And he does, even when Alex doesn’t want to talk anymore and they’ve shifted so his head is resting on Willie’s shoulder and he’s starting to slump heavily into him. Even when the tears start to eke down Alex’s face and he can’t look at the place he’s supposed to have been occupying for the last quarter century anymore. Even when Alex just wants to go home.

He stays.

**Author's Note:**

> idk man i woke up with the need to slap this together this morning its a thing now merry chrysler
> 
> you know the drill i don't edit blah blah blah
> 
> if you liked it pls comment and then go read my other jatp works pls and thank ilu!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [COLORS BURST AS I CLOSE MY EYES](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28299966) by [AgnesClementine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgnesClementine/pseuds/AgnesClementine)




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